by Joey Ruff
“I’m not even going to acknowledge that one,” she said. “This is leather from your torn jacket. It was found at the scene.” She was silent a moment as she looked over the paper, and then she looked up from it and caught my eyes. “There was a spot on there that looked like blood, so I had it analyzed.”
“And?”
“And it is blood. But the report says it isn’t human.”
“So you believe me?”
“No. Because the initial reports on the body we took from the scene – Arthur, I believe you said – confirmed that he was indeed human.”
“So what’s the other blood?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me.”
I shrugged. “I had a burger for lunch. I don’t think they cooked it all the way.”
“You expect me to believe that? With all your talk of monsters and such. You don’t want to take this opportunity to try and convince me of something else?”
“Not really,” I said. “What can I say, I have to take a shit. I just want to get back to my cell.” I stood and walked around to the front of the table, leaned up against it.
There was another knock on the door and this time What’shisname poked his head inside and said, “I’ve got the girl’s parents on the phone. Their daughter’s window was shattered tonight.”
Stone nodded to him, and when she wasn’t looking, I slid the baggie into my pocket. “Bring the car around,” she told her partner. “Let’s get over there and talk to them. We’ll figure this out.”
“You’re starting to believe me,” I said.
She spun to look at me, eyes narrowed. “I’m just feeling out your story.”
“Ask the girl,” I said. “Ask her about her imaginary friend. Ask her if she was given anything. If I’m right, the something – whatever it is – would have belonged to one of the other missing kids. Julie Easter, maybe, or I don’t know, Adam Gables.”
She looked at me blankly for a minute and said nothing. I could tell she was searching me, trying to decide if I was being honest with her. Then she looked at the mirror and said, “Detective Anderson, please make sure that Mr. Swyftt is escorted back to his jail cell.”
22
Anderson, ever the good detective, escorted me back to my cell. “Hate to be doing this to ya, son. You know how them federal agents can be.”
“I know.”
“My hands are tied.”
“At least they’re not cuffed.”
He smiled a hearty, toothy grin. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose they are.” He shut the door to the cell. “Again, real sorry, Mr. Swyftt. Hopefully, your little girl will be along soon to spring ya and take ya home to a cozy bed. You need anything before I go?”
“I never got my lobster dinner.”
“No, and I don’t suppose you will here in this place. They can’t even spring for a decent coffee machine.” He chuckled to himself. “I was thinking more like a blanket or somethin’ like that.”
I shook my head, and he left. As I sat on the bed, my mind began to wander, swimming with ideas and theories. I hadn’t had a quiet, conscious moment since the attack.
The only thing worse than getting your arse kicked was not knowing what kicked it. I didn’t know what I was up against, and that scared me. Knowledge was power. In fact, it was usually my greatest weapon. Not knowing left me feeling weak, impotent.
Whatever it was, it had taken over Arthur, spoken through him, possessed him. Sure, there were a few things that did that, but when you factored in the diet that it had been eating – little kids – and that particular passage of Job it had been quoting… I tried to tell Stone, but she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t believe me. She didn’t see the significance in the quote or understand that God was addressing Job, a man He declared righteous. It was a story I knew well, related to, even. Years ago, I had a similar talk with the Man Upstairs; it’s why I quit the priesthood. He didn’t ask me fuck-all like, “Do I know where the rain is kept?” and those other idiot riddles he spoke to Job. But He might as well have.
It occurred to me then that maybe it wasn’t the voice that had spoken to me in the sporting goods shop that I found familiar but maybe just the words and the tone: Acid flashbacks of an older life. Whatever had been inside of Arthur spoke with authority, spoke as if it thought itself as God.
I was not a righteous man, so I knew that whatever it was could not have been God himself, because He wouldn’t speak to me that way. Whatever Arthur was, whatever I considered myself, we were at least once removed from the characters in the metaphor.
I had thought that I was dealing with a demon, but now that didn’t quite add up. Demons weren’t that arrogant.
Of course, the Fallen were, but the technique was off. It lacked their passion, their pizzazz. Kidnapping children was too small-scale for Fallen Angels. They’re all about dividing and conquering, bringing down nations and setting themselves up as gods.
Fuck.
So where did that leave me? Korrigan? They were nothing more than demoted angels, after all. It was possible that one of them was running some kind of game in town.
There were too many variables, too many unknowns. But still, I couldn’t escape the thought I was missing something, and as I tried to recall the events of the past two days, I fell asleep.
I dreamt.
It was twenty years ago, and I was a detective in London, looking in on a case involving missing children. In my dream, I knew who was doing it and why, just not where he would strike next.
I came home to our flat, and Alara was on her knees, crying, and I kept asking her where Anna was. Over and over again, I just kept asking, “Where’s Anna? Where’s Anna?” But she wouldn’t stop crying. She wouldn’t look at me.
I sank to my knees before her, took her shoulders and made her look at me, but her eyes were gone and in their place were two empty holes. She cried blood and yelled, “Why did you do this to me? Why did you bring this on us? Why did you let her go?”
I cried then and reached to comfort her, but my hands were severed, replaced with smooth stumps. I tried to speak, but my lips refused to open.
I woke in cold sweat, my shirt and forehead damp and clammy.
I put my hand against my forehead and took a deep breath. My arms shook, and my heart beat too fast. Unable to calm myself or focus, I started to pace the length of my little cell.
I hadn’t dreamt in years. This shit was starting to get to me. I kept opening my hands, closing my hands, pacing and massaging my head with my palm or rubbing my forearms like I was trying to stay warm.
“You don’t do well cooped up,” came a female voice, the only thing that existed outside of my own, nervous skin. “You’re really going stir crazy. It hasn’t been that long.”
I turned to Nadia. I must have looked crazy to her.
“You okay?”
I took a deep breath, shook my head. “No. I’m losing my mind.”
“Jono, just calm down. You’re not losing anything,” she said, her voice warm and reassuring. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I had a dream.”
“Lots of people dream.”
“Yeah, but not like this.”
“You haven’t lost anything.”
“That’s not what Ape says. Ape says I’m losing my edge.” I shook my head. “You come to get me out of here?”
She arched a brow. “I tried to write you a check, but Agent Stone’s put a hold on your bail.”
“Well, don’t let that stop you,” I said. “I’m on a case, and we had our first major breakthrough. I need out of here.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Work your mojo.”
“You want me to break you out of jail? You usually operate in the gray, but this is pushing it, even for you.”
“Nadia!” I snapped. “I don’t have time to argue. I have to get home. I have to talk to Ape. We need to figure this thing out.”
“He’s got his own case, Jono…”
“It’s the same case!”
That stopped her. “What?”
“Look, I’ll explain everything to you in the car. Just…just get me the fuck out of here.”
She hesitated a moment, looked at me carefully. Finally, nodded, put her left hand on the lock of the cell door, and pulled the right back to the corner of her mouth as though drawing back an arrow on a bowstring.
In the span of a few short seconds, Nadia’s pupils dimmed in a cloudy, cataract-film, and her hand began to glow in a white haze of light. Fog gathered and swirled like a galaxy parallel to her open palm, and the random spirals spun faster before crystallizing into a paper-thin sheet of what looked like stained-glass as bright as a Christmas light.
She closed her fingers gently around the edge of it.
In one motion, she pulled her hand away from the lock and swung the disc down through it, like a karate chop. The latch clicked. The door swung free. Her hand sprung open like a trap, and the energy that she held became vapor again, breaking apart and vanishing back into the ether. Dust to dust, so it goes.
I gave her a weak smile and walked out of the cell. “You look terrible,” she said.
I nodded. “Tell me about it.”
“You tell me.”
“In the car.”
We began to move together down the hallway, her hand on my shoulder. I stopped, braced my hand against the wall, grimaced. “What hurts?”
“My face. My shoulder. Failure.”
“Who have you failed?”
“Adam Gables.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Julie Easter. Toby Emmerich. How many other nameless children? How many cases have I turned down in the last few months? Eric Patterson, Joel Conklin, Emily Yankee. Those are just the ones I can name…”
“You need to stop,” she said, forcefully. “You can’t blame yourself for that. You didn’t do that to those kids.” We stopped moving, and she met my eyes. “Ape is wrong. You are not slipping. You were beaten and bruised. You got arrested. So what? You’ve been beaten worse.” I tried to look away, but she caught my cheek with her hand and spun me back to look at her. “The Jono I know wouldn’t give in to defeat so easily. Not like this. And if you don’t want to fail Adam Gables, you need to bring that Jono back.”
She was right. I knew she was right, but part of me still refused to listen. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye as I said, “What about Anna?”
“Anna?” She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and I felt her forehead lean against mine. “Dammit, Swyftt. Is that was this is about? Ape told me what he said to you in the car, but I guess I didn’t want to see it. I wanted to believe that after all this time…maybe you had made peace with it.”
I shook my head, shaking hers in tandem. She moved away, and I could feel her gaze on me. “I know you blame yourself for losing her, but what happened to Anna was not your fault. I’m sure you did everything you could. I know you. I know the way you don’t give up, and I know you would have been as great with her…that if you were only even half the dad that you’ve been with me all these years…” She paused, searching maybe for the next words. I heard her sniffle. My breathing became harder. I felt my eyes begin to water and looked around, making sure we were alone.
“What about Hux…”
She smacked me.
“Don’t you say that,” she stammered, the emotion quavering in her voice. “Don’t you fucking dare say that. That was not your fault. You don’t get to blame yourself for every bad deed that happens in this world. You can’t take that upon yourself.” She tried to hide what she was feeling, tried to come across as stronger than she felt, but I was staring at the floor, saw the lonely tears fall from her cheek. “Whatever you think happened that day, whatever you’re blaming yourself for,” she said, her voice broken almost to a whisper. “I forgive you.”
Quieter, she said, “I always forgave you. I never even thought to blame you…”
We stood there for a moment, the silence heavy and pregnant with all the things we couldn’t say. I felt one hand on my shoulder, the other on my elbow. She squeezed both. “I know it’s hard,” she said and sounded stronger. “But you have to shake this off because there are people counting on you.”
“Like who?”
“Eric Gables, for one. Adam. Ape and I. You’re no good to us like this.”
I thought about that a moment and turned away from her, wiped my eyes with the hem of my shirt. After a minute, I turned back, saw her red-rimmed eyes, large and glossy, and smiled. I nodded and said, “Cheers.”
She smiled back, hugged me. “You don’t get to give up,” she whispered into my ear. “You’re the rock that keeps this dysfunctional little group together. You’re the one that pulls us up when we fall.”
She broke the hug and said, “And right now, Ape needs you because I’m afraid that whatever you’re about to tell me is causing him to give up.”
I ran a hand through my hair casually, held the top of my head for a minute, and looked at her. “Someone did right by you,” I said.
She smiled bigger.
“Don’t tell me I had anything to do with that. I’m not that good a person.”
“You’re better than you know.”
We walked out of the hallway and into the office at large, passed the desk where Stone had deposited my pilfered jacket. I stopped and slipped it on.
At the front door, I heard Anderson’s call, “Mr. Swyftt!”
Cautiously, I spun. I was out of my cage and caught.
“Detective Anderson,” I said.
Anderson walked into the reception area with another plain-clothes detective and two uniformed men. “Where do you think you’re going?” His face was serious.
“My…daughter, here,” I said, motioning to Nadia, “bailed me out.”
Noticing Nadia for the first time, he extended his hand to her. “Nate Anderson.”
“Nadia Prince.” She shook his hand.
“Glad to know you, ma’am,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Perfect timing. We just got a call. Another child abduction uptown. If you don’t have anywhere pressing to be, I’d appreciate you riding along on this.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’ve done good work,” Anderson said. “Psychic or not, I’d like your opinion. Check things out for me?”
I turned to Nadia. She nodded, the look in her eyes said, “If you’re feeling up for it.” I nodded back to her and turned to the Detective. “We’ll follow you.”
23
The boys in blue drove a squad car, lights and sirens blazing. Behind them, Anderson drove a rusty, brown, two-door ’75 Buick LeSabre convertible with flashing lights of his own. Nadia and I followed in the El Camino, and as I drove I relayed the events with Arthur Towers. She sat, stunned, in silence for a few minutes. “Poor Ape,” she said. “No wonder he’s so withdrawn.”
“Poor Ape? Poor me. He ran off and where did I end up?”
“Speeding through the night in search of adventure,” she said with a smile. “Don’t play the martyr. At least, you’re not still rotting in jail.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. It was all I could do. She was right. Kind of. “You call this adventure?”
“What would you call it?”
“An after-thought. I call it being too late.”
“Maybe. But look on the bright side. This is the closest we’ve gotten, and you have an open invitation to do your thing. You find the right clue, and we might beat this thing back to its lair.”
“Aren’t you sunny all of a sudden.”
“I feel good,” she said. I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her smile on me. “Don’t you?”
I was still shaky, but felt better than I had. I nodded.
She just smiled. “Adventure.”
We headed to Ravenna, slowed a few blocks from the park, and came to rest outside a cozy, blue Tudor with a front porch swing and a white picket fence.
&nb
sp; “Nice neighborhood,” Nadia said. “It’s hard to believe even a community like this is vulnerable to these attacks…”
“Rich people don’t have ill fortunes?”
“This isn’t rich. It’s comfortably suburban. Perfect little lives, neat little houses, two-point-five kids. The American dream and some night terror is ruining it.”
“That’s the Midnight, for ya, love. No regard for America.”
We opened the doors and stepped out onto the quiet residential avenue, flecked with trees and lampposts. Anderson and the other detective got out of their car, and the two uniformed officers kept their seats, police band squawking from behind their cracked windows. “Swyftt,” Anderson said in a gruff voice and motioned me closer with a waggle of his finger.
I jogged the short distance, Nadia close behind, and stopped in front of him. “The call came in through dispatch about twenty minutes ago. James Wright, age 6, was reported missing from his bedroom. The window was open.”
I nodded. “What else can you tell me?”
“That’s what I got. You’ll know the rest when I do. You’ll come inside with Detective Barnes and myself. Your girl here,” and he motioned to Nadia, “would be best waiting outside.” He gave her an apologetic look. She nodded in understanding. “I’ll introduce you as a specialist,” he continued. “Child psychologist might go over better than psychic.”
“You could just say Private Investigator,” I said.
“I coulda left you at the station.” He grinned.
I shrugged, tossed Nadia the keys.
The three of us walked to the porch, and Anderson knocked. Barnes breathed heavily beside me. I turned to him, noticed the tousled blonde hair, the whispers of a mustache that looked like little-kid pubes, and the thick wire-framed glasses he wore. Like Anderson, he was dressed in dark slacks and a light-colored shirt. He wore a dark tie that bore the ghost of a mustard stain and was dressed for the cold with an overcoat.
Barnes turned to me, a curious expression on his face.
“Are you sick?” I said.
“Sinuses.” His voice was raspy.
Anderson knocked again, and the front door opened. A man stood there, gave us a surprised look, and said, “Uh, can I help you?”